Under Sail by Felix Riesenberg – A Review
January 30, 2010
Under Sail is a remarkable account of sixteen year old Felix Riesenberg’s first voyage on a square rigger from South Street Seaport in New York, to Honolulu and back. He sailed on the A.J. Fuller, a Bath built, copper clad, wooden hulled, three skysail yard medium clipper in the waning days of the age of sail.
As [...]
The Making of a Sailor or Sea Life Aboard a Yankee Square-Rigger
October 30, 2009
In the 1875, Fred Harlow was a teenager eager to follow the example of his three brothers and go to sea. After one trip on a coasting schooner to appease his parents, he signed aboard the Yankee square-rigger, Akbar, bound for Australia and Java. He kept a journal of his trip which, fifty years [...]
Read MoreJ D Davies wins 2009 Samuel Pepys Award
October 23, 2009
This year’s Samuel Pepys Award has been awarded to novelist and historian J D Davies for his book, Pepys’s Navy:Ships, Men and Warfare 1649-89, which examines the English navy in the second half of the 17th century. Chair of the judges Ann Sweeney said she expected the book to become “an enduring work of reference. [...]
Read MoreJohn Stobart and the Ships of South Street
September 17, 2009
Last year the National Maritime Historical Society (NMHS) published a fascinating booklet, John Stobart and the Ships of South Street, which features the pre-eminent maritime artist’s paintings of ships arriving or departing from New York’s South Street docks.
At first the presentation struck me as odd. The NMHS describes it as a booklet rather than a book, which is apt, as it is soft [...]
“Messing About in Boats” – A Toast to Water Rats Everywhere
July 10, 2009
Sometimes an author gains immortality from a body of work and sometimes from a single line of poetry or prose. John Masefield will forever be known for his poem “Sea Fever” and the phrase ”all I need is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.” Only slightly less famous is the comment by the Water Rat in Kenneth [...]
Read MoreSir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle – Seafarer
May 22, 2009
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born one hundred and fifty years ago today. While he is best known for his classic Sherlock Holmes mysteries, he served as a ship’s doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead from February to September 1880 and was ship’s surgeon on the steamer Mayumba to west Africa from October [...]
Read MoreFull Fathom Five Thy Father Lies…
April 23, 2009
William Shakespeare is generally considered to have been born on this day in 1564. He died on the same date 52 years later. While there is nothing to suggest that Shakespeare ventured across grander bodies of water than the Thames, his writing about the ocean was masterful. In honor of life, beginning and ending on thsi [...]
Read MoreChristmas at Sea
December 24, 2008
I hope all are having a wonderful holiday season, safe, warm, and dry. One lesson I learned many years ago when I first went to work for a shipping country was that ships and those who sail them rarely stop for holidays. In a modest nod to those far from their home ports over the holidays:
Christmas at Sea
by [...]
“Get a Life” – An Interview with Julian Stockwin
December 17, 2008
Reprinted with permission from Quarterdeck, November/December 08. Quarterdeck is a newsletter of nautical and historical fiction published by McBooks Press, Inc. To subscribe to Quarterdeck click here.
By George Jepson
Julian Stockwin’s new Thomas Kydd naval adventure, The Privateer’s Revenge (published as Treachery in the United Kingdom), is set in the Channel Islands. As with the previous [...]
The Nigger of the Narcissus – by Joseph Conrad
An Amazing Novella with an Unfortunate Title
December 12, 2008
As much as we are all fond of Hornblower, Aubrey, Ramage, Kydd and the rest, it is good from time to time to be reminded that writing about the sea doesn’t begin or end with the Georgian Navy. Some of the greatest sea battles in literature are not fought between great navies or even single ships. [...]
Read MoreMelville’s White Jacket and the question of justice
December 9, 2008
In a comment on a prior post, Fiddler’s Green, Redwing mentioned White Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War, by Herman Melville. I had never read the novel. I am now doing so and enjoying it very much. (It can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg.)
White Jacket and Redburn were apparently each written in [...]
The Evolution the Nautical Hero Part II.
Breaking the Cochrane Mold – Pressed-men, Yanks, Bastards and Maoris
October 6, 2008
The nautical hero based on the Cochrane model – a British officer in the Georgian navy, often out of favor with the admiralty, sailing in detached service against formidable odds, has made for wonderful reading over hundreds of books by dozens of writers. Either in spite of this or because of it, many writers are [...]
Read MoreFrom Lord Cochrane to the Wellington Hurricanes – the Evolution the Nautical Hero
Part 1. The Founder of our Feast – Thomas Cochrane
September 28, 2008
Joseph Campbell wrote in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces that all stories follow the ancient patterns of myth and legend. Whether the heroes of nautical fiction quite fit Campbell’s monomyths is open to question but there is no doubt that nautical fiction has had its own well established archetypes.
The greatest single archetype in [...]
